


With Good Intention

by DyrneKeeper, rm (arem)



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Fix-It, Harry Lives, M/M, Multi, Other, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-02 19:19:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4071568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DyrneKeeper/pseuds/DyrneKeeper, https://archiveofourown.org/users/arem/pseuds/rm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry’s broken up with them, again. Merlin is sick of this. Eggsy has a plan. Well, he’s working on one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“This is getting really fucking old,” Eggsy says, staring glumly into his half-empty pint. Merlin hasn’t yet decided if the Guinness thing is one more unsettling -- and unusefully appealing -- way Eggsy tries to be Galahad, or just a lack of imagination. He’s pretty sure it’s lack of imagination on Harry’s part.

Merlin says “Mm,” and stares at his own glass of scotch.

“This is the third time in what, three months?”

“Fourth.”

“Fourth, yeah. Wait, fourth?”

“He dumped you right before the job in Venezuela.”

“Yeah, but that was only for like, a night. Got him back the next day.”

“You, maybe. Me, he still wasn’t speaking to. Which at least kept him out of ops when I was trying to get you and Roxy out alive.”

“Thanks for that, by the way.”

“You’re very welcome,” Merlin says drily.

“Has he always been like this?”

“Moody, unreliable, and given to existential crises?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes.”

“Then why...” Eggsy trails off, with an elegant flap of his hand that eloquently communicates _put up with the bastard._

“Why do you?” Merlin asks. Eggsy may be capable and charming, but that still doesn’t mean he wants to discuss his own long, complicated, and usually completely maddening relationship with Harry Hart with him.

“‘Cause he saved my life, can kill people with a cufflink, looks like heaven in a suit, and is the best man I know,” Eggsy says so easily it startles Merlin. 

“Yeah,” Merlin says. “That’s about the size of it.”

 

The most generous of people would probably define Merlin’s relationship with Harry as on-again, off-again, with barely enough consistency to even qualify as a relationship. But they are Kingsmen, and consistency was something they gave up the moment they decided they wanted this life. 

Polyamory -- and their very few, very efficient agreements on that front -- doesn’t demand less honor. Any exclusivity, long- or short- term, in their lives would be pointless, a recipe for heartache that would get in the way of their jobs. 

As far as Merlin and Harry are concerned, they’ve been together for twenty-five years. Nights like tonight -- both he and Eggsy, dumped by Harry, _again_ , this time simultaneously -- aside. Given the preceding two and a half decades Merlin has invested in Harry, this is, in fact, getting very old. Eggsy doesn’t seem well pleased either. Considering that five years ago they both thought that Harry was dead (getting shot in the face tends to have that sort of result), Merlin feels a mite bit bad for just not wanting to do this anymore.

When he says as much, Eggsy is, predictably, appalled.

“You can’t just give up on him, yeah?”

“Watch me.”

 

At first, Eggsy assumes he’s worrying about nothing. But when the second week goes by with no sign that Merlin and Harry have even spoken -- and Eggsy spends most of his waking hours with or in direct communication with one or the other of them, so he’d know -- he realizes this is serious. That he’s gotten used enough to this poly thing that he’s more worried about Harry and Merlin’s relationship than his own mess with Harry just adds to how mental the whole situation is. 

25 _years._ That’s fucked up. And Merlin has a point; Eggsy’s not really in the market for 25 years of this bullshit himself, even if he’s the only one of them halfway likely to be alive that long.

What he can’t figure out, is if he should tell Harry what Merlin told him.

 

“Well, what’s your agreement on situations like this?” Roxy asks, treading water as they take a break from swimming laps in the Kingsman pool. Which, despite all of Kingsman’s ridiculous funding, is never properly heated and always fucking freezing. 

“We don’t got one for that.”

“Really?” Roxy raises a perfect, and perfectly judgmental, eyebrow.

“Look, our job is saving the world. We don’t have fine print when it comes to who’s in which bed on a night. Or how to handle Harry being a prat and Merlin being, you know, Merlin.”

“Well maybe you should get some, then,” Roxy says, and kicks off the wall splashing him in the face, Eggsy is very sure, on purpose.

 

“Do you need something, Galahad, or are you just going to lurk there all day?”

Eggsy doesn’t ask how Merlin knows it’s him without even turning around. Frankly, he doesn’t want to know.

“Just came to see what you were doing,” Eggsy says.

“Piecing together feed from Percival’s last debacle so we can maybe salvage something from that operation and I don’t have to write a big ‘I don’t bloody know what happened!’ on the mission report.”

“D’you want help?”

Merlin does, at least, look up at that. “Come again?

Eggsy shrug and drags a wheeled chair over to Merlin’s monitor setup. “Do you want help?”

“Do you even know how to use this computer?”

“I could figure it out.”

“While I’m willing to entertain that as a terrifying possibility, why are you actually here?”

“What d’you want to do about Harry?”

“It’s not your concern, Eggsy.”

“It’s totally my concern, ’cause I love him, right? So that means I should tell him if he’s fucking up his life in some massive and irrevocable way, but like, how am I supposed to do that, when we’re, like, spies, and you’ll probably kill me if I tell ’im where your head is, yeah? So he’s stupid, you’re stubborn, and I’m fucked. So, again, what d’you wanna do about it?”

“If we were all actually spies, we would not be having this conversation at work,” Merlin says tartly.

“No, come on, you’ve seen James Bond. We’d just be having it more naked like and there’d be a bird involved.”

“Get out, Eggsy,” Merlin says, but there’s a quirk of something that might be a smile at the corner of his mouth as he turns his back.

“Don’t you want help with the mission report?” Eggsy asks, smiling charmingly in case Merlin turns around again or can see him in the reflection on the monitor.

“If I did, I wouldn’t ask you. Out!”

Eggsy whistles as he leaves. But he still hears Merlin’s heavy sigh when the door is almost, but not entirely, closed behind him. It doesn’t sound like relief.

 

If Eggsy is going to tell Harry -- and he’s not certain he is yet -- he should probably be sure Harry has actually decided to be on speaking terms with him first.

“What do you want, Galahad?” Harry finally says, in a tone almost identical to Merlin’s, when Eggsy is still in the Kingsman meeting room fifteen minutes after everyone else has left. 

“Have dinner with me tonight, yeah?”

“You’re going to be in Munich tonight. Speaking of which, hadn’t you better start packing?”

“When I get back, then.”

“Just try to get home in one piece first,” Harry-as-Arthur says, still reading over a sheaf of papers and twirling a fountain pen in his fingers. The motion looks idle, but Eggsy spent eight months watching Harry fight tooth and nail to be able to walk again and get his fine motor skills back. They’re not all there, still, and not all there all the time. More days than not, he carries a cane. Everyone they work with may treat it as merely a very dangerous man’s current weapon of choice, but the reality is that on long days he sometimes still needs it to serve its most basic function.

Eggsy still thinks the eyepatch makes him look delightfully rakish.

All of it’s why Kingsman made him Arthur, a benching disguised as a promotion, and Sir Kay more than happy to turn the post over to someone else and get back in the field once Harry was fit for (desk) duty again.

“Mmkay, but if I do get back, no more shipping me off on missions so you don’t have to deal with me, yeah?”

“You’re one of the best agents we have, Galahad. You go where Kingsman needs you to go.”

That’s not a _no_ , but that’s also as clear a sign as any that Harry isn’t going to snap out of his Arthur mode or his prick mode or whatever else he has going on anytime soon.

“Galahad,” Harry says, when Eggsy has his hand on the ornate brass door handle to leave.

“Yeah?”

“Be safe, please.”

 

Eggsy is as safe as he always is. Which is to say he makes it back to HQ five days later with only a new cut on his forehead the infirmary stitches up neatly, and a sprained wrist he’s incredibly glad isn’t a break. He’s still quite annoyed when Roxy blows his marksmanship scores out of the water.

His annoyance fades when he runs into Merlin, by utter and sheer coincidence, as he’s tripping out of the locker room.

“Have you talked to him?” Eggsy asks eagerly.

“Welcome back, Eggsy. Your report is late. And if you have a question, proper names are helpful.”

“You know who I mean! And no it’s not, I left it on your desk this morning.”

“Eggsy.”

“Alright, you’ll have it tomorrow.”

“Mm.”

“So have you talked to Harry?”

“Shockingly, I have not had time to attend to interpersonal issues in between, once again, saving the world and keeping you alive.”

“Whelp, I’m alive. You wanna grab a pint later?”

 

Merlin most assuredly does not want to grab a pint with Eggsy. And yet. 

At least Eggsy orders something other than Guinness, which he assumes means he’s either getting over Harry, getting over being Galahad, or has been spending more time than usual with Roxy. Probably the latter.

Eggsy doesn’t even mention Harry for the first twenty-seven minutes of the evening. Merlin starts to wonder if he’s going to escape tonight unscathed. Eggsy just tells stories about his latest mission, gossips cheerfully about the other knights, and a couple of times brings out his phone to show Merlin pictures of his baby sister, who is now a gap-toothed seven-year-old, as cheerful and happy-looking as Eggsy always is.

“So that’s it,” Eggsy says, swiping through pictures on his phone and not looking at Merlin, now. “You’re just gonna not talk to him ever again?”

“If you have an alternative,” Merlin says. “I’d dearly love to hear it.”

“Can I punch him?”

Merlin chuckles. “You hardly need my permission for that. Though I can guarantee that won’t make him less infuriating. And he’ll probably just break something of yours while you try.”

“Yeah?” Eggsy looks back up at Merlin, his face lighting up.

“I’m not telling you stories.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Classified.”

“Bullshit.”

 

Eggsy finally catches Harry -- or rather, Harry consents to being caught -- at the shop one night as they’re both on their way out. Harry’s talking quietly with Bedivere, who Eggsy has seen kill men with nothing more than a piece of chalk and a clothes brush. When Harry sees Eggsy emerge from the dressing room lift he meets his gaze and gives a little nod. Eggsy plants himself on the sofa to wait until Bedivere has packed up and gone for the night and they’re alone.

He watches out the window instead of staring at Harry out of the corner of his eye, but he still knows when Harry finishes whatever it is he’s doing at the counter. There’s a soft breath of moving air as Harry walks behind and around the sofa, and then the soft dip of the cushion as he sits down next to Eggsy. 

Eggsy feels his heart speed up, his breath catch, and the whole of his body tense in an unbelievably unpleasant way. He may be a spy, he may be trained to keep calm under pressure and actually is practiced at it by now, but talking about relationships, especially one slipping out of his hands? Terrifying. And there’s no doubt in his mind that Harry is about to attempt to take control over this stalemate and make everything much, much worse.

“I commend you, Eggsy, for how professional you are being about this,” Harry begins.

“Merlin threatened to change the locks on the entire tech wing if I didn’t stop pestering him,” Eggsy says, both to be contrary and because if Harry thinks anything about this situation has been handled professionally he’s out of his brain-damaged mind.

“Ah.”

Eggsy waits for Harry to say something else. Surely, he’s going to say something, anything else. When Eggsy chances a sideways glance at him, he looks as miserable and tense as Eggsy feels. And he doesn’t seem, as he sometimes does now, as if he can’t quite get out the words he wants to say. He just really doesn’t want to say anything.

Eggsy has no idea what to do, and settles for uncrossing and recrossing his legs while giving a disgruntled sigh. It’s moments like this he resents _everyone_ for making him such a good copy of Harry. Someone else would know how to actually talk. It’s sure not either of them though.

“Look, Eggsy --”

“Yes?”

Harry gives a sigh to match Eggsy’s own. “I am trying not to break your heart.”

“Like you tried not to get killed in Kentucky?”

“Eggsy --”

He juts his chin out and turns his head to glare at Harry. Harry’s lovely brown gaze looks tired, and sad. “Generous of you and all, but a little late. As usual.”

Harry, now that he’s decided on something to say, tries to soldier on. “I am trying not to break your heart,” he repeats. “And I am trying to give you something other than a life trapped between two and a half decades of my and Merlin’s post-traumatic stress and dysfunction.”

“Should have thought of that before you took me to bed, then, yeah?”

“I should have, yes.”

“If you’re trying to regret me you can go fuck yourself.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”

“Besides,” Eggsy says. He has to swallow to get the words to come out because he doesn’t want to say these, either, except for the part of him that wants to say them too much, fling them in Harry’s stupid stubborn face. 

Harry just blinks at him, placid and sad. 

“There’s nothing to be caught between,” Eggsy says. “Says he’s done this time. Just so you know.”


	2. Chapter 2

Founders' Day is, as far as Eggsy is concerned, the most ridiculous holiday in the Kingsman calendar. He’s all for tradition when tradition gets him a bulletproof suit and an arsenal of weapons. The traditions of formal dining rooms and glowering oil paintings still make him itchy, however.

Finally, after a boring, interminable speech -- even Harry, as Arthur, manages to make it boring and interminable, which is really an astonishing feat -- they get to drink. And at least, this time, when they raise toasts to dead men, it’s not to anyone recently deceased.

Roxy -- who looks smashing in a dove grey double-breasted suit that makes her all curves -- abandons Eggsy five minutes into the party. Which is either because she’s tired of Eggsy’s whinging about Harry, or because she’s spotted Amelia across the room. Eggsy decides it’s Amelia.

Eggsy also decides to quest for more alcohol. 

At the rather ridiculous bar spread with all sorts of bottles and decanters and glassware, Eggsy finds Merlin. He’s leaning back with his elbows on the bar, a glass dangling from his fingertips, and a scowl trained on the room at large. It doesn’t even take Eggsy’s super-spy skills to follow his eyeline and see that he’s staring at Harry.

“So, no progress on that front?” Eggsy asks. He leans next to Merlin and bumps elbows with him. 

“You might say that. Thank you, by the way, for telling him about our little chat,” Merlin says drily.

“Welcome,” Eggsy says cheerfully, and raises his glass to Merlin before taking a swig. Merlin rolls his eyes. “You shoulda heard what he was saying to me first, though.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. ‘Didn’t want to stick me between two cranky old codgers’ -- my words, not his --”

“Imagine that.”

“And ‘trying not to break my heart,’” Eggsy adds, this time going in for making actual airquotes.

“Good god, Harry.”

“Yep.”

“So as for you,” Merlin says, and turns his piercing eyes towards Eggsy. “Why do you want to be stuck between the two of us? You never seemed much interested when you had the chance.”

Eggsy shrugs. The poly thing had, for the most part, been Harry-and-Merlin and Harry-and-Eggsy. Eggsy likes Merlin enormously, but he’s not quite sure the feeling is mutual, and the handful of times they tried all being in bed together it just ended in awkwardness. Harry got annoyed when all their focus was on him; Merlin backed off because he didn’t like the confrontation; and it was all too much relationship and emotion packed onto one mattress for Eggsy to be able to deal with.

“Who says I don’t have the chance now?”

“Eggsy.”

“He put up with you long enough. Must’ve been reasons why. Maybe I want to see what they are.”

“He really is an insufferable prick.”

“Yep.”

“You are not nearly enough like him,” Merlin says. 

Eggsy doesn’t know what to make of that, so he settles for narrowing his eyes and watching, assessingly, while Merlin gets another drink and shoves off the bar to mingle with the crowd or, more likely, find an Eggsy-less corner to skulk in. Eggsy decides he’s gonna let that last twenty minutes at most.

 

“He’s been staring after you all night,” a voice says in Merlin’s ear as he peruses the hors d'oeuvres. Merlin tries not to start. It’s Eggsy again, grinning now as he edges far too close into Merlin’s personal space and bumps their shoulders together. The elbow thing previously was bad enough.

“I’m aware.”

“Wanna do something about it?”

Merlin would scold Eggsy, again, for interfering in something that still is not his business and clearly is not going to get resolved tonight, any time soon, or ever. Except Eggsy’s not asking seriously, or even in humorous petulance. He’s leaning into Merlin’s face and he’s beaming, some spark of mischief in his eyes that Merlin knows he should be well cautious of. 

Instead he says, ‘What do you have in mind?”

“We stand here, nice and close and friendly-like. Smile, laugh at each other’s jokes, and then we get out of here, together, inconspicuously enough that it’s incredibly conspicuous.” Eggsy smiles like a puppy that thinks it’s a shark. It’s somewhere between endearing and completely embarrassing.

“I am not faking an affair with you,” Merlin hisses.

Eggsy tuts. “Doesn’t have to be fake if you don’t want it to.”

 

Somehow, and Merlin really hates his life, he winds up in a corner, Eggsy on one side of him and Percival on the other. He nods absently as Percival natters on like the boring, classist wanker he is. This may be Kingsman, but polo? _Really?_ It drives him mad enough, but he has no idea how Eggsy and his ever-fading accent manage to survive it.

Merlin hardly bothers to look at either of them as he scrolls through hotel apps on his phone trying to find the most offensively five star accommodations for he and Eggsy. Because whether they’re having a fake affair or a real affair, Merlin has no intention of conducting it somewhere they don’t both have the option of storming out.

Eggsy, pressed too close and radiating a friendly heat through his suit, keeps leaning over his shoulder to look at the screen, which is really excruciatingly annoying, but Merlin forbears and does not shove an elbow in his ribs. Percival, meanwhile, is either dense or purposely trying to torment them. Eggsy, inexplicably, is able to keep up with the polo discussion, and Merlin can’t help but lament the things this organization does to men.

He settles on the Connaught because it’s five star but not too flash. There, Eggsy, whatever his intentions, is less likely to be distracted by new money mistresses and Russian gangsters. Merlin books the room from his phone, charging it to Kingsman, because really, fuck Harry’s everything. He texts the information to Eggsy -- he’s in the suit, so the reservation’s under his name -- even though he’s standing right there before walking away without saying a word like Percival isn’t mid-sentence about some horse.

Eggsy is waiting for him when he finally leaves the salon where the party is. He leans against the wall in the corridor and twiddling some gadget or other Merlin should probably never have let him touch in the first place.

"All right, let's go," Merlin says gruffly. 

Merlin doesn’t bother to note this isn’t discreet enough to be indiscrete, it’s just flagrant, and the security cams will pick up everything. Even so, he can't help be smirk at the corridor when Eggsy kicks off the wall to follow him, grinning broadly. 

 

Eggsy flirts outrageously with the bird at the counter, because she's well fit and because he can practically hear Merlin grinding his teeth from the other side of the lobby. Plus, if this does turn out to only be a fake affair, it’s nice to have options. 

Merlin, when Eggsy finds him, is conspicuously examining a flower arrangement in lieu of acting natural which explains why he doesn’t do field work then. Eggsy can’t even figure out what they look like, checking into a place like this with no luggage. Sure, he can get mistaken for a rentboy with Harry, but with Merlin he don’t think neither of them make a bit of sense. Oh well. One of the many purviews of a Kingsman is to just not give a fuck.

The Connaught’s main staircase is so magnificent Eggsy hopes he gets to shove some bad guy off it some day. Another point in favor of getting Harry to talk to him again, Harry can probably make that happen.

He doesn't let himself feel self-conscious keying into the room only because he knows Merlin probably wants him to be. And sure tonight is about pissing off Harry, but it's a bit about pissing off Merlin too. It’s just so easy. And that’s a thing Eggsy’s discovered about himself; he may like a challenge, but he’s sure not one to say no to easy.

"Oh, well done," Eggsy says, pushing the door open onto the sort of luxury he's gotten used to in his time at Kingsman but will never, ever stop appreciating the absurdity of.

"I'm so glad you approve."

Merlin’s clearly irritated at no one so much as himself. Which gives Eggsy two tactical options -- suggesting drinking or initiating fucking.

Drinking, for the moment, seems safest, and Eggsy produces the flask he swiped from Percival at the party while Merlin was being angry at what he foolishly assumed was just Eggsy cuddling up to him. Merlin recognizes it too, from the way his eyebrows hit his hairline, or would, if he had one. When Eggsy offers him it, though, he just takes a swig and then hands it back without comment.

Eggsy takes his own gulp. It doesn’t, tragically, open a magic path of sanity for the evening. Merlin is still standing there, looking vaguely disgruntled, arms folded over his chest and watching him.

Well, fuck it, then. Eggsy screws the cap back on the flask, drops it on an overstuffed arm chair, shoves Merlin up against the nearest wall, and kisses him soundly. 

Merlin, the absolutely bastard, has the audacity to laugh.

Eggsy’s about to get all wounded about it too, when Merlin grabs the lapels of his suit in a way Harry totally wouldn’t approve of and kisses him back with even more force. When Eggsy laughs, too -- more a shocked, pleased breath than anything -- Merlin bites his lip. 

“Right,” Eggsy says when he can breathe again, as he chalks the kiss up as good for him and definitely too bad for the bird in reception. The wool of Merlin’s jumper is scratchy on his hands, and he’s not sure when he fisted his fingers in it. “So why’d it take you so long to kiss me like you do him?”

Merlin grins, feral like Eggsy’s never quite seen him before except when he’s about to kill people. Suddenly, it’s Eggsy’s back that’s to the wall and Merlin’s weight pressing him into it. “Are we here to have philosophical conversations or are we here to fuck?”

“Well,” Eggsy says, because that’s hardly the sort of question that requires a lengthy answer, but it’s fun to tease. Then he drags Merlin back in by the tie.

 

Eggsy is insistent about helping Merlin out of his clothes, which is ridiculous and not efficient, but it seems even less efficient to fight with him about it, so Merlin lets him have at. He’s torn between amusement and exasperation when Eggsy feels the need to stop them long enough to fold his clothes somewhat neatly on the chair, right on top of Percival’s flask, which apparently isn’t permitted to actually bear witness to the deed. Considering it may have a camera in it somewhere or other, that’s probably wise.

There are more scars and new bruises on Eggsy’s flesh than the last time Merlin saw him naked. For a moment, Merlin thinks sadly of Harry and when the both of them were young and -- at least relatively -- unmarked by this life of theirs. But then he grabs Eggsy by the hips and shoves him down onto the bed.

Eggsy grins as he tumbles backwards, and then catches the back of Merlin’s neck to drag him down into a kiss that’s far more soft and heated than Merlin expects. It’s not what he’s up for, not yet, so he just pushes Eggsy away by the shoulders and slides down his body.

Eggsy is loud. Merlin’s not entirely surprised -- their two disastrous threesomees with Harry weren’t entirely uniformative -- but this is an orders of magnitude concern. It’s one thing to spitefully charge a luxury hotel room to their employer; it’s another to get angry calls from the front desk because Merlin’s mouth on Eggsy’s porn-perfect dick is resulting in some sort of religious conversion.

When Merlin pops off for a moment in order to point this out, Eggsy doesn’t quiet down. Because now he’s desperate and being denied and begging like the insufferable brat he is. Merlin is unable to avoid a number of uncharitable thoughts about the ways Harry indulges people and passes his bad habits around like a particularly nasty Windows-based virus. Thankfully, saying Eggsy’s name sharply is enough to get him to shut up, at least briefly, and when Merlin grabs him by the hair, he’s at least clever enough to figure out where he’s wanted.

He may still be stupidly loud with Merlin’s dick in his mouth, but he’s at least unintelligible. It’s a huge improvement and cuts down on the emotion of their grudge fuck considerably. And, if nothing else, at least Eggsy can multitask. Merlin’s too hard and happy to ask why Eggsy couldn’t have managed to display these skills at an earlier, more convenient date and settles, instead, for taking his sweet time working towards coming all over Eggsy’s face.

 

Merlin expects Eggsy to be antsy and restless in the afterglow, the way he’s been when it was the three of them. He still hasn’t forgotten or forgiven the time Eggsy crawled over both of them to pad out of bed and down to the kitchen to, inexplicably, make toast for all of them. Predictably, he’d managed to get crumbs all over the sheets, and even Harry had been cranky about that.

He’s pleasantly surprised, then, when all Eggsy does is burrow under the covers -- dragging Merlin insistently with him -- and curls up against Merlin’s side. Merlin’s used to sharing space with Harry’s long limbs and sturdy shoulders that always take up far more than his fair share of the bed. What he’s not used to is someone snugged up small against him and using his stomach for a pillow. He pushes his fingers into Eggsy’s hair and smiles to himself when that gets a soft, pleased rumble out of him.

“Puppy,” Merlin says, as disapprovingly as he can.

“Uhuh,” Eggsy says sleepily.

Now, perhaps, is when Merlin should demand a more cogent explanation out of Eggsy for the entirety of this ill-advised evening, but pillow talk has never been Merlin’s strong suit, with Harry or anyone else. And, really, Merlin’s content with viewing the whole night as a fairly entertaining and relatively harmless fuck-you to Harry.

So instead he says, “So I think I’ve got an idea for an upgrade on the glasses.”

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna try an’ make a monocle again. Harry had a fit for a week about that.”

“God, don’t remind me.”

“I’m with you, though, woulda looked awesome.”

“Thanks. But no, not a monocle. Roxy wants accessories she can wear when she’s in a gown not a suit. Apparently the glasses sometimes clash.”

“She’s right, they do. Wait,” Eggsy says, craning his neck around to frown at Merlin. His face is still flushed pink, and his mouth is still red. “You just sucked my brains out through my dick and now you wanna talk about tech?”

“Did you have other ideas, or shall we just lie here awkwardly until we decide to slink back to our respective homes?”

Eggsy squints at him. “You know,” he says thoughtfully. “I bet you could do wicked things with a girl’s compact.”


	3. Chapter 3

Harry frowns as he does his weekly penance, pouring over expense reports.  It is not, actually, that Kingsman needs to account for every pound spent. Harry, like his predecessors, is happy to not look too closely at a meal here, a drink there because his people too often live brutal and short lives.  But the patterns in such expenses, legitimate or not, is crucial for detecting betrayal or infiltration.  Since Valentine’s day, it’s no longer something they can afford to pretend is not a risk.

Which is why he finds himself pinching the bridge of his nose as he stares at a thousand pound hotel bill apparently run up by Merlin and Eggsy on Founder’s Day.  For indirect communication, it’s remarkably direct.

He sighs miserably, knowing that eventually they’re going to have to talk about it.  He wonders if he can be lucky enough to hold the conversation off for years.

There’s a knock on his door, but no pause for response before it swings open.  It’s not, thankfully, Eggsy and his bluster, but just Roxy and her well-earned, if excessive, familiarity.

“Galahad,” she says by way of greeting, her voice soft.

It’s not, then, work.

“You shouldn’t call me that. It’s confusing.”

“Are you confused?” She teases.

“No,” he says, gesturing to the mess of paperwork that is his desk ”Sadly.”

She frowns and pulls the chair in front of his desk around to the side, like he’s still bedridden, just now on the infernal mound of bureaucracy that has become his life.

It was Roxy Kingsman had sent to collect him, when he was finally conscious but couldn’t even sit up on his own. After Valentine’s little experiment in the church the hospital had called his next of kin, and his next of kin had called Kingsman, as eager to have as little to do with Harry as they ever had.

Harry’s glad they did. He’s always wanted just as little to do with them.

So “Roxanne Hart” went to visit her “father” at his bedside in the terrible small hospital in Kentucky, a petite angel in lovely charcoal worsted.

“I’m not here because I’m the girl,” she announced the first night she spent at his bedside, Harry barely conscious but so glad to have someone familiar present. “I’m here because Merlin and Eggsy are too much of a mess from thinking you’re dead to come help out now you’re alive.”

She stayed with him until he was ready enough to travel, and then back in London moved in to his house in the mews while Harry went through endless rounds of every therapy imaginable and some he still thinks Merlin made up just to fuck with him.

It turns out it was still Roxy who took care of him then, because she’s the only one who could tolerate him when he was frustrated and bored and angry enough to throw things.

And so now they are very close indeed. Eggsy may think he’s seen the worst of Harry’s struggles to walk and talk and feel like a goddamned human being again, but the truth is he has no idea. Really, Harry prefers it that way. It was lovely to feel like he was leaving the worst of his injures behind as he and Eggsy began to fall into their relationship together, something good gathered out of the remnants of something truly terrible.  

But it was Roxy who was at Harry’s side from the hospital all the way home. She’s seen him vulnerable in a way no one else has, because Harry had never been that vulnerable before. Which is why he can push his tablet toward her and nod for her to pick it up.

Her perfectly-arched eyebrow lifts at bloody Merlin’s bloody expense report. The date alone makes it perfectly obvious that hotel room wasn’t for work.

“We have dinner reservations,” she says, setting the tablet facedown on his desk without making any comment on it. “Are you going to make us late again?”

On the train back to London, and then the cab ride to the restaurant, Harry is happy to listen to Roxy’s chatter and tease her about her womanizing. She’s doing this all to distract him – from the awful drizzling rain making the city sodden and miserable, to the headache and the backache and the knee ache the rain just makes worse, from that blasted expense report – and he appreciates it more than he can say.

“Harry,” Roxy says halfway through their soup. Harry blinks and realizes that he’s lost the thread of her chatter entirely. She touches his hand gently, her small, deadly fingers cool and smooth. “Do you want to talk about the idiots you’re in love with, or do you want to go back to the estate and shoot things?”

Harry chuckles in spite of himself. “To be honest I don’t even know what I’d say.” He looks at the wall over Roxy’s shoulder, the familiar pub they’ve been coming to once a week since Harry was pronounced fit to walk out his own front door once more.

Roxy grins teasingly. “A gentleman doesn’t talk about his broken heart?”

“Oh, let’s not be dramatic.”

“Eggsy told me what you said.”

“That little –”

“Actually, I think he told everyone what you said.”

Harry groans.

Roxy smirks. “Tristan and Kay have a bet going. Which one of them will accidentally blow something up because they’re too distracted trying to win you back.”

“Merlin and Galahad are far too professional to let their personal lives interfere with their work,” Harry says wrily.

“Eggsy decided to save the world as a personal vendetta when he thought you were dead.”

“His heart always has been in the right place,” Harry muses.

“Harry,” Roxy says, the first note of exasperation in her voice.

Harry leans back and clasps his hands in his lap. “All right, then.”

Roxy sits up straight and gives her very best teacher, I am listening face, just with a glint in her eyes that says she is judging absolutely everything about Harry. He really does adore her.

“Kingsman may lead fruitful lives, but rarely do they live long ones,” he says. “I never expected to die of old age. I never particularly wanted to die of old age. Except here I am, back from the fucking dead, and behind a fucking desk doing paperwork while the men and women I respect most in the world put their lives in danger every single day. I’m getting old, my dear lady, and I’m afraid it’s not good for me.”

Roxy’s face, meanwhile, is lighting up with a frankly terrifying smile.

“Harry,” she says. “Are you having a midlife crisis?”

“Roxanne, this was never supposed to be the middle of my life.”

Roxy bursts into laughter.

“Excuse me!” Harry wonders if he should be more offended than he is.

Roxy doesn’t stop giggling. Harry has to crack a smile of his own in response.

“When Merlin and I started our…thing, I didn’t think we’d both live long enough for me to have to deal with the emotional repercussions of being together. Except here we are, twenty-five years later as of last month, and I’m still shit at this whole relationship thing.”

“Oh, Harry,” Roxy says. She’s not trying to hide her amusement at all. “Getting old really isn’t good for you, is it?”

He shakes his head.

“Well then as I see it you have two options. You can be very tragic, and very sad about your mortality while you send Eggsy out on missions while he is statistically the most likely of any of you to die in the next five years. And you can keep not talking to Merlin and be very alone.”

“Or…”

“Or you can be an adult, because clearly neither of them are capable of being one, and then hold it over them for the rest of your collective natural lives.”  
  
  


When it comes to finding empty rooms and out-of-the way nooks in which to carry out a semi-secret affair, it turns out that the Kingsman home estate is perfect. Eggsy thought he’d found all those hidden rooms himself, when he’d still been a proposal, but as it turns out he’d had no idea. Now it seems every time he grabs Merlin’s elbow or Merlin grabs his, he gets dragged off for a quick and delightfully vicious shag in some spot he hadn’t even known existed.

Today it’s in a cluttered little room in the attic, on a worn sofa pushed up against a gabled window that looks out over the rolling estate grounds. Merlin fucks Eggsy and then kisses him when Eggsy tries to talk, so it turns from something rough and fun to something slower and more thoughtful. When Eggsy can’t do anything with his mouth but be kissed his energy goes to thinking, instead. It’s a thing that’s been happening more and more often between he and Merlin these last few weeks.

“Merlin,” Eggsy says, when they’re done, stretched out on top of him while Merlin rubs a thumb into the short hairs at the nape of Eggsy’s neck.

“Yes?”

“Are we still doing this just to tick Harry off?”

Merlin makes a noise in the back of his throat. Eggsy isn’t sure if it’s thoughtful or annoyed. “Well?” he demands.

“Certainly not. The sex is excellent.”

“Merlin!”

Merlin raises an eyebrow at him. “What are you asking, Eggsy?”

“I’m asking a simple question. Harry’s the one who’s got the relationship skills of a rock, you’re actually good at this stuff. So come on. What’s going on with, you know, us?” he says, lifting himself up a little so he can gesture between their bodies.

Merlin’s fingers tighten on the back of Eggsy’s neck. “No, Eggsy, we’re not just doing this to piss Harry off. Although we will piss him off, considerably, if we are later to that meeting than we already are.”

Eggsy pouts, but Merlin is having none of it, and shoves Eggsy off of him. Eggsy grins and rolls onto his side on the sofa while Merlin stands and starts gathering up his clothes.

“Does that mean we finally get to do this at your place?”

“No, no it does not.” Merlin throws Eggsy’s shirt at him. “Come on, get dressed.”

“Aww, why bother? Harry likes us both better this way.”

“And yet probably not together this way. Also I do not want to have to go scrub footage of your naked arse from the security system. Get dressed.”

Once they’re both decent, though, Merlin stops Eggsy before can unlock the door.

“You’re crooked,” he says softly, and deftly adjusts the knot of Eggsy’s tie at his throat.

“Thanks.”

Merlin just kisses him briefly and closed-mouthed, which surprises Eggsy as much as anything. He expects a smirk when he pulls back, but Merlin just looks thoughtful.

  
  


Any hope Eggsy had, that Merlin’s pensiveness would translate into any improvement on the Merlin-Harry front is, tragically, totally unfounded. Harry takes one look at them when they walk in together and seems to know instantly what they’ve just been doing. And because Harry is a prat and an idiot, means he then spends the meeting needling both of them about stupid details both of them are well-equipped to handle without his nagging. It makes Merlin pissy, Eggsy thinks rather deservedly so, and he himself does not hesitate to be a brat right back at Harry.

He’s surprised when the meeting doesn’t end in yelling. He decides to excuse himself before it gets a chance to go to the deadly-men-shouting-at-each-other place, and bangs out of the room before Harry-as-Arthur can give him permission or stop him.

“Merlin,” Harry says as soon as the door bangs closed behind Eggsy.

“Yes, Arthur?”

Harry takes off his glasses and rubs his temples. “Would you stop that.”

“Stop what, sir?” Merlin looks at his tablet, not Harry, as he types something into it.

“Bringing your bloody personal issues to work.”

“Excuse me,” Merlin says. He lifts his head and blinks owlishly at Harry. He doesn’t say  _you started it_ , but he doesn’t have to. It’s perfectly clear from his expression. Also, they have been having fights – and making up from them – for a very long time. Harry knows how to steer this conversation; he just hopes Merlin is still willing to play along with him.

Harry tosses his glasses on the desk and stands up. His cane is leaning against the desk at his side, and he leaves it there as he strides to the window and looks out, clasping his hands behind his back. Merlin’s sigh, still from the chair on the other side of Arthur’s desk, tells Harry exactly what Merlin thinks of his little dramatic display.

“I’m not going to yell at you about the hotel,” Harry says.

“All right?”

“I am working my way up to talking about it with you.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Merlin. Really. We both deserve better than how we’ve been handling this. It’s just…difficult.”

“You’re not exactly making it easier.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Good.”

“I’m worried, though. About you and Eggsy.”

“Oh for god’s sake, Harry.”

“I understand that you’re angry with me. I understand that he is, too. But he is…very dear to me, and I will not tolerate you using him just to punish me.”

“Galahad, if you’re going to accuse me of absolute bullshit, at least have the decency to do it to my face.”

Harry sighs, and turns around. Slowly, because Merlin sounds as furious as he ever has.

“Yes?” Harry says.

“You may have missed it, because you were a tad busy getting a bullet removed from your brain, but Eggsy and I went through absolute  _shit_  in that fucking bunker. Together. And we thought you were dead. Whatever is going on with Eggsy and me, it has never been just about you.”

“Good!” Harry says, and raps his knuckles on the desk for emphasis. “Now would you  _act_  like it, instead of like bloody children?”

Merlin crosses one knee over the other, settling into his chair with an ease that is absolutely maddening. Which is certainly why he does it. “Certainly. Come for dinner tonight. We can talk about this all then. Like adults. Or are you going to be occupied  _thinking_  about talking about this for a good while yet?”

Harry stares at Merlin. Merlin gazes back placidly.

“You absolute bastard,” Harry says.

“Can I assume that’s a yes?”

“I hate you.”

“I know. Eight o’clock? If you can tear yourself away from your mission reports for long enough.”

“Get out of my office,” Harry says, but there’s a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and a mirroring one on Merlin’s face.


	4. Chapter 4

It is in fact only ten minutes past eight when Harry appears in the shop, takes one look at Merlin, who is sitting very patiently, thank you very much, on the sofa, and keeps on walking.

Merlin whistles as he follows Harry out to the front steps of the shop, and then into the cab. Harry says nothing, just raises an eyebrow, when Merlin tells the driver to take them to Harry’s house rather than his own. Merlin has no issue bringing Harry home, but Harry still has good days and bad days and from what Merlin saw of him today at the estate, this is not one of his best days. Whatever they’re about to do, Harry will be more comfortable in his own home. Also, he’ll owe Merlin considerably for letting them do this on Harry’s turf.

Harry just looks amused when Merlin points him in the direction of the dining room table while he himself continues on into the kitchen. It’s been a few months since he’s been here, but nothing ever changes here anyway. Merlin’s known where Harry keeps his pots and which drawer the utensils are in for a long, long time.

“So should I take the fact you’re letting me make you dinner, in your house, to mean you’re reconsidering our relationship status?” Merlin asks, as he chops onions for risotto.

“Need I remind you, you were the one who invited me to dinner. And yourself to my house. After apparently telling Eggsy you were done.”

“Well. Yes.”

“Are you done, Merlin?”

Merlin sighs over his vegetables, pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a knuckle, and says, “Frankly, if you’re going to keep up this ridiculous behavior of throwing a tantrum and tossing out Eggsy and I and god knows who else --”

“There’s no one else.”

“-- every time you remember to lose your mind about the fact that you are mortal. Then yes. I’m done.”

“And yet here you are.”

Merlin does turn around at that, arms folded over his chest and glare set to intimidate. Harry merely blinks mildly back at him. “I thought perhaps, after so long together, we could be adults and sort this out constructively. Because clearly the alternative is not working.”

“Ultimatums, Merlin?”

“Given that you broke up with me, yes.”

“I’ve done that dozens of times.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed. And it’s getting tiresome. And if there’s no one else but Eggsy and me,” Merlin’s breath catches as he says it. It’s quick, and he tries not to let it show, but he’s sure Harry notices it nonetheless. It’s just that the idea of is overwhelming. “Then you need to decide if you want to be in a relationship with anyone at all.  If you don’t, I’m not interested in chasing after you and making both of us miserable.  Isn’t it bad enough you’ve let me do that for the last two plus decades?”

“I’m pretty sure I chased you in the beginning,” Harry says placidly.

“And what are you doing now?”

“I don’t know how to be with you,” Harry says very carefully.  “Less now than I ever have,” he admits.  “That doesn’t mean I want to be without you.”  The admission is, clearly, hard for him to make.

“Why is it more difficult for you?”  Merlin asks it casually, turning back to the cooking.  He knows it’ll be easier for Harry to possibly be honest if he’s not staring him down, but Merlin also wants some privacy for his own emotions.

For a long time Harry doesn’t say anything.  “There was an assignment I had, in Amsterdam, about ten years ago.  Human trafficking.  I don’t know if you remember it…”

Merlin makes a noncommittal noise.

“There was a party with a carnival theme, and while I was trying to save one tiny little corner of the world, I had my palm read.  And she told me I had two life-lines.  Or rather, one, that was cut in half.  And she said that must mean I was a very deceptive man.  I thought my cover had been blown, but she was just doing her job and perhaps was just very good at reading people.  But I’ve kept thinking about it, since … well, since what happened.  It played in my mind for some reason when I didn’t have my words back yet, and it was maddening.  Because maybe that’s what she saw --”

“What, that you’d almost die?” Merlin asks, desperate for whatever unsettling point Harry is trying to make.

“No.  That all of this life since is just me faking it.”

“That,” Merlin says.  “Is actually crazy.”

“I suppose,” Harry says placidly. “It’s not as though she saw two love lines.”

Merlin nearly chokes on the laughter. A glance over his shoulder shows him a Harry whose shoulders are still tense and whose eyes are still uncertain but who is, at least for the moment, smiling softly.

“You’re not faking it,” Merlin tells the onions. He realizes he’s finished chopping his whole little pile of them and isn’t sure what to do next, so he sets about chopping them smaller.

“That’s very kind. But I’m not the same man who went to Kentucky. Nor will I ever be. And perhaps it’s not fair to anyone -- to myself, to you, to Eggsy -- to keep going on as if I were.”

“Perhaps it’s not fair to not give us the choice, either.”

Harry gives an assenting little hum.

“We’re not stupid.  And even Eggsy’s not a child. None of us are undamaged from that period of time, and frankly I need you to fuck off or step up in some manner that’s not absenting yourself from our lives in whatever melodramatic fashion scratches your need for self-sacrifice.  I’m sorry you can’t go into the field anymore, but please stop treating your relationships like they’re a goddamned mission.  You are so frustrating, I don’t even know why I do this.”

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” Harry says. It’s both wry and sad at once.

“I used to keep a list, you know.”

“Of what?”

“Yes. Two lists, really. Reasons to stay with you. Reasons to dump your sorry arse.”

“God, we should never leave you down in that cave so long, you get terrifying.”

“Mmm.”

“So...?”

“So what?”

“What was on the lists?”

“Oh, that’s classified.”

“You absolute bastard.”

“Indeed,” Merlin says, almost cheerfully. “They never corresponded to whether we were actually together at the moment, however.”

“Because I took that matter into my own hands?” Harry hazards.

“Well there was the occasional war that needed to be dealt with, but otherwise, yes.”

“If you’re looking for an apology...” Harry says, his voice trailing off into uncertainty. He doesn’t say anything more until Merlin looks over his shoulder at him again. “Are you looking for an apology?”

“Well, are you sorry?” Merlin asks.

“Yes. Yes I am.”

“Keep going,” Merlin prompts.

“Then yes. I am trying to apologize. But I have no idea how to do that, and I need you to tell me how. And what to do next.”

Merlin sets down the knife carefully and wipes his hands on a dish towel.  He’s incredibly conscious of not wanting to startle Harry and not really having any room for missteps.

“Then just say you’re sorry,” Merlin says quietly, turning to him.  “And start acting like the partner you have legitimately -- despite everything -- been to me for the last twenty-five years.”  He reaches out for Harry’s hand.  “And come to bed.”

Something flickers across Harry’s face, the desire to protest mingled with gratitude and maybe shock.  But he takes Merlin’s hand anyway.

“It’s been a long day,” he says, shorthand, Merlin knows, for so many things.

“I know.  Let’s go upstairs.”

 

Merlin lets Harry follow him up the stairs so that he can’t see him struggle.  That struggle, and its unavoidableness, has been what so much of the drama of the last few years has been about.

In Harry’s bedroom, they kiss, Merlin achingly hard almost at once.  Depending on the state of Harry’s mind and body today, that may just be inconvenient but he is overwhelmed with desire at the genuineness of his and Harry’s connection right now.

Merlin sits him down on the bed to strip him, tongue in his mouth as often as he can.

Harry doesn’t protest, doesn’t fuss, doesn’t insist he can do himself things that would take more time or effort than either of them have any interest in right now.

Once they’re in bed, naked and tangled, Harry’s prick hot and hard in Merlin’s hand with more ease and eagerness than either of them expected, Merlin realizes he is an absolute emotional mess. He feels like Harry has come back from the dead, and back to him, all over again.  Merlin’s been waiting for this -- Harry murmuring endearments and gratitude as they kiss -- for a very long time.

Apparently Harry has been too. His breath is ragged against Merlin’s mouth as he makes small, desperate sounds of the sort Merlin is used to him trying to hide in a cascade of dirty talk.  Distantly, Merlin understands that Harry has always been so profoundly difficult because Harry has also always been so profoundly vulnerable.  And never moreso since Kentucky.  Harry can complain all he wants about what it did to his body, but Merlin knows that’s hardly been its only impact.  Harry may insist on thinking he’s been diminished by the events in that church, but Merlin has only seen it amplify both his ruthlessness and desperation. It’s been difficult for everyone, but it’s beautiful now that he’s let it come to their bed.

Harry comes loud and sudden with a grateful smile and a broken laugh.  Merlin expects they’ll both take a moment to breathe through it.  He himself may still be so hard it hurts, but he’s nearly as overwhelmed by Harry’s orgasm as if it were his own.

Harry, however, is having none of it.  He’s on his knees and sliding down the bed to take Merlin in his mouth nearly instantly.  Merlin is grateful for the pleasure and also the space; his emotions are too close to the surface and he never wants to be without the intimacy of this night with Harry again.

He rests his hand gently in Harry’s hair, until Harry makes an annoyed sound around his dick.  Merlin grips harder then, and Harry seems happier, eager and perfect. When Harry presses a single finger up inside him, Merlin who comes with a startled shout.

Harry swallows before he pulls off and rests his head on Merlin’s stomach like that sort of familiarity is something they’ve ever done.  Neither of them says a word; neither of them has to.

Until Harry’s stomach growls.  Loudly.

Merlin sighs.  “I should still make you dinner.”

Harry makes a noncommittal sound and curls closer.  Merlin marvels.  “All right, you may not want to move, but I’d also like to eat dinner, and neither of us should be skipping meals.”

Harry groans and rolls onto his back.  “You are correct, and I hate you,” he says primly.

Merlin sits up, swings his legs over the side of the bed, and fishes for enough of his clothes that he won’t feel completely ridiculous in Harry’s kitchen.  “I’ll go finish dinner,” he says.  “Find your way downstairs in thirty?”

“If I must.”

 

Harry, when he comes downstairs, is, unlike Merlin (who couldn’t be bothered to put on a shirt), completely dressed in slacks, a button down, and a sweater.  He doesn’t lecture Merlin, though, just drops his hands onto the Melin’s waist, kisses his shoulder, and compliments his cooking.

It would be the most singularly surreal domestic moment of Merlin’s life, except that it feels so natural.

They eat without talking much at all. It’s not the strained silence of the past several weeks, or the heavy, looming silence of many of the months before that. Merlin’s grateful for that. It’s good to just have time with Harry, to smalltalk about the dreadful weather, Percival’s latest agitating to bring the halo suits back into regular use, and Lancelot’s horror at Percival.

When they’ve finished Harry sits back in his chair. He has one long leg crossed over the other, his hair is falling across his forehead, and his face is as soft as Merlin’s ever seen it.

“Leave the dishes,” he says, when Merlin stands up and starts to clear the table. “They’ll keep til morning.”

Merlin raises an eyebrow. Harry just lifts the corner of his mouth.

“Eggsy’s been a bad influence on you,” Merlin says.

“I had plenty of bad habits before I ever met Eggsy,” Harry says. “As did you.”

“So is this the part of the evening where we start shouting at each other about that boy?”

Harry looks at his hands in his lap, and then back up at Merlin. “I rather think I’ve had enough shouting for the day. Will you come back to bed?”

 

Upstairs again, they dispose of their clothes more neatly this time. In bed, Merlin pulls the covers up over both of them. Harry curls up on his side, his back to Merlin’s chest, and Merlin wraps an arm around Harry’s waist.

“So what are we going to do about Eggsy?” Harry asks.

Merlin rubs his thumb against Harry’s stomach. He can feel old scars under his fingertips. “Are you in the mood to take advice?” he asks. He presses a kiss to the back of Harry’s shoulder to soften the snark.

“I did ask.” Merlin can hear the smile in his voice. “I suppose I owe him an apology, too. Don’t I?”

“I’d imagine it would be appreciated.”

“Do you know, for half a minute, after I saw your blasted expense report, I thought all of my problems were solved. You and Eggsy, happy ever after, and I could be a tired, worn out, tragic old man in peace.”

“And then?” Merlin asks.

“And then I was quite sure I had made a fucking mess of everything. As wake up calls go, it was startlingly effective.”

“I’ll pass the compliment on to Eggsy. It was his idea.”

“You two seem to have bonded in the meantime, at least.”

“We have,” Merlin allows. “I always knew he was an extraordinary young man. Apparently we just needed another common enemy.”

Harry chuckles. “Merlin,” he says. “Have you fallen in love with him?”

“Yes.” There’s no need to say any more than that.

“Good. This,” Harry says, and closes his own hand over Merlin’s. “Will it make things complicated between you?”

“Well, I don’t imagine it will make things simpler. But it may make things much better.”

“I do know I have a lot of work to do. With both of you. Individually, and together. If that’s something both of you want.”

“As for Eggsy, you’ll have to ask him. As for me, I want to know why you’ve changed your tune. It used to be you couldn’t stand the three of us all together. You said we paid too much attention to you.”

“And you did. For my comfort, at least. But now that you and Eggsy are, whatever it is that you are to each other, perhaps that won’t be the issue for me it was. In any case, I think it’s worth another try. If you’re willing.”

“I am,” Merlin allows. “To give it a try. But whether the three of us can function together or not, I’m not going to give up Eggsy.”

“Nor will I, assuming he’ll have me back. I’d also like not to give up you, regardless.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Merlin says, even though it feels unnecessary to say. Whatever shape their relationships take after tonight, Harry is going to be with him. Of that, he feels certain.

“How was it,” Harry asks, his voice low now and on the edge of sleep. “That you two never got together when you thought I was dead? Or while I was recovering, for that matter.”

“I know you were unconscious for most of it, but the world was rather going to shit,” Merlin says dryly. “There wasn’t much time for anything like that. Besides, even you and Eggsy didn’t start your thing until after you woke up.”

“You mean until I could walk and talk and pretend to be me again,” Harry says.

“Being awake was rather a prerequisite of fucking him.”

Harry chuckles softly. Merlin lets his eyes drift closed, and breathes in Harry, the warm scent of his body, the lingering smell of sex, the last traces of Harry’s cologne in the hollows of his neck.

“I never expected mortality,” Harry says quietly, “To be the thing that kept me alive.”

Merlin asks him what he means, but Harry is already asleep. Merlin lets out a long sigh, lets his breathing match Harry’s, slow and deep, and follows him down.


	5. Chapter 5

The morning after Merlin spends the night at Harry’s, everyone knows they fucked. _Everyone_. It’s immensely evident in the morning all-hands meeting. Harry’s at the head of the table, Merlin’s at the mirror-slash-smartboard _thing_ , and there’s absolutely no difference from any other meeting except for how very soft their faces are when they look at each other.

It makes Eggsy squirm in his seat a bit. That look is so intimate. It seems totally indecent and something that shouldn’t be seen in public.  He also has no idea what it means for him.  He’s happy for them, but oh does he want that affection turned on him.

On the other hand, the meeting is brightened immensely by the quite different looks the other Kingsmen are giving each other. Everyone is clearly freaking out.  Eggsy is sure Kay and Bors are texting each other through their glasses.  

Eggsy accepts his own mission assignment cheerfully, because it would not be becoming of a Kingsman to demand answers to questions of a personal nature in front of others. After everyone has been dismissed, he stays in his own seat at the table -- or at least tries to. Harry bows his head to his paperwork, and Merlin looks at him, looks at Eggsy, and then jerks his head toward the door.

Fucking Kingsman training. Five years on, Eggsy still jumps when Merlin says. He heaves himself up from his seat with a sigh and follows Merlin out the door.

“Eggsy,” Merlin says, once the door to the meeting room is shut, Harry still inside. Non-mission-related then. Shocker.

“Yeah?”

“So,” Merlin starts, and then can’t quite seem to say anything else. Eggsy takes a moment to be amused at Merlin being flustered. It’s not particularly a look he’s used to seeing on him, and amusement sure beats the alternative.

“Yeah?” he says again.

“So,” Merlin says, with a glare, and that is familiar. “Last night, Harry and I talked.”

“Talked-talked, or shagged-each-other-all-over-Harry’s-place-talked?”

“Eggsy.”

“Because you know the fact you shagged each other all over Harry’s place is not exactly a secret?”

“We didn’t --” Merlin says, clearly exasperated, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Why is it impossible to have constructive conversations with both of you in the same 24 hour period?”

“Sooo it was constructive then?” Eggsy asks. Because as much as he enjoys needling Merlin, he’s still coming around to the thing where he gets more of what he wants when he’s less of a shit. In some circumstances.

Merlin heaves a sigh. “Yes. It was. And we are back together, or as together as we have always and, now hopefully, will always be. Which you deserve to know. And deserve not to worry about.”

“Who said I was worried?”

“ _Eggsy_ ,” Merlin says. It’s so very Harry in tone and level of fond annoyance that Eggsy has to grin. “I know you want to fix things with him. And you should. But last night was -- a lot, for both of us but I think especially for him. Just -- give it a couple of days to settle before you go charging in and talk to him, all right? Who knows, if you wait, he might even beat you to it.”

“You have _got_ to be joking.”

“You’d think,” Merlin says.  “I told him that no matter what happens between you two, I’m not interested in giving you up.”

It hits Eggsy like a physical force.  Which is sort of disturbing, because he hadn’t really thought he’d been that tense about it.  He lets out a heavy breath, and Merlin doesn’t look nearly as quizzical about it as Eggsy would like.

 

 

“How’s he doing?”

Merlin jumps a foot, is very proud of himself for actually muting the microphone, and glares over his shoulder. “You should wear a bell.”

Harry smiles, his lazy predator smile, the look of a cat considering when and where to pounce next. That smile has been doing unhelpful things to Merlin’s heart rate for nearly three decades. He rolls his eyes from Harry back to his monitors, and clicks the microphone live again. “Mark at two o’clock. Yellow frock, on the corner.”

“I see her, yeah,” Eggsy’s voice comes back to him. “Jesus, how do birds even do all this in heels like that?”

“I’m afraid that’s a topic you’ll have to take up with Lancelot. Proceed at your discretion.”

“May I sit?” Harry asks, quietly enough Eggsy won’t hear him over the comm.

Merlin waves an assenting hand. Harry fetches himself a chair from one of Merlin’s underlings’ desks, and pulls it up beside, and ever so slightly, behind, Merlin’s. Merlin gives a short nod at the entirely welcome acknowledgement that while Harry may be Arthur, in this room Merlin reigns.

It’s not meant to be more than a tailing-and-bugging mission. Eggsy whistles as he saunters down the street after the mark; Merlin catches Harry smiling.

“So what did you and Harry talk about?” Eggsy asks, as he stands at an intersection waiting for a light to change. The girl in the yellow frock is still clearly visible.

“Eggsy.” Merlin sighs. Harry smirks. Which seems utterly unfair, as this entire clusterfuck is completely his fault.

“Aw, c’mon, Merlin.”

Fine, then. “We talked about what a right idiot he’s been.”

Eggsy snorts. “Yeah I bet that went over well.”

“He apologized, even.”

“No fucking way.”

“For an obnoxious old codger he can be quite reasonable sometimes.”

“You know, you were the one wanted to dump him,” Eggsy reminds Merlin and -- not that he knows it -- Harry.

“Yes, we talked about that too.”

“Did you apologize?” Eggsy asks.

“Not in so many words, no.”

Harry and Eggsy snort simultaneously in response.  It’s incredibly disconcerting.

“He’s very fond of you, you know,” Merlin tells Eggsy, for the fuck of it and because Harry’s smirk should be illegal.

“Yeah, well,” Eggsy says, as he smiles at a doorman and slips into the building the mark had entered just a moment before. “It’s just my natural charm.”

“Among other things, I’m sure.”

“Merlin, are you flirtin’ with me on a mission?”

“She’s heading up to the seventh floor,” Merlin says, as he taps into the lift system, his voice dry as a lifetime on the job can make it. “If you’d rather take the stairs the breathless disheveled look is really so very attractive on you.”

“Cheers, Mer,” Eggsy says, and smacks the button to call the next lift.

Harry puts a hand on Merlin’s knee. Merlin pretends not to notice; as long as the hand doesn’t move and Merlin doesn’t have to think about it, he is fine with it being there. Except not thinking about it turns out to be relatively impossible. With his voice in Eggsy’s ear, Eggsy’s cheerful whistle coming through the speakers again, and Harry’s big, warm hand closed over his thigh, all Merlin can think about is these two men.

Undoubtedly, the three of them still have any amount of shit they need to deal with. However, when they all finally get in bed together, Merlin is now certain it’s going to be very, very good. Frankly, he can’t wait. Especially because he’s not entirely sure Harry or Eggsy have made same realizations that he has.

When the lift dings and Eggsy steps out on the seventh floor, Merlin guides him down the twists and turns of the hallway until he’s arrived at the office of interest. Eggsy’s only obstacle is a charming receptionist, and Eggsy will soon overcome her, as well, the full force of his charm trained on her.

There’s a burst of static, a roar of noise, and the video feed from Eggsy’s glasses goes back.

“Agent Galahad, are you there? Galahad, do you copy?” Merlin asks. He’s not frantic -- agents die when their handlers succumb to franticness --  but he most certainly is tense and very, very afraid. Harry’s fingernails dig into his leg.

Then a fit of coughing comes over the speakers, and the black on the screen turns to grainy fragmented images.

“Think I broke your glasses, mate,” Eggsy says, his voice hoarse and thin. He’s interrupted by another fit of coughing, but Merlin’s heard few sounds in his life more lovely.

“That’s quite all right. What happened, Galahad?”

“Someone thought your grenade lighter was a wicked idea. I think her stapler blew up. Or maybe it was her coffee cup, I dunno, something went off.” Eggsy’s prowling through the door the receptionist had previously been guarding, into the office proper. Merlin can’t see what’s become of the girl, but he doesn’t have high hopes for her survival. It’s clear, from the way the feed is swaying, that Eggsy is limping. It’s also clear from the way his breathing is labored that he’s in pain.

“You said this was just a tailing job, Merlin. Just follow her to her office and slap down some bugs, you said,” Eggsy spits in a passable imitation of Merlin’s brogue. “If I knew I was gonna get blown to bits I wouldn’t’a worn my new shoes. Fucking bastard,” Eggsy growls. Merlin’s fairly sure that grow is directed at whoever just did a fair job of blowing him up, and not Merlin himself, but it‘s never safe to assume.

Beside Merlin, Harry stirs. One eye still on the monitor, Merlin turns his head enough to give Harry a deathglare. Right now, he needs to get Eggsy out of this situation without incurring any more damage to himself or the mission. He does not need Harry to start giving directions and distract Eggsy any further.

“Galahad, report on your condition, please,” Merlin says mildly.

“Ears are ringing, headache like fuck, and pretty sure I just broke a couple ribs,” Eggsy says. “Nothing that’ll take me down, but I’d like to get this done fast.”

“We’ll have medical waiting when you get back,” Merlin assures him. “In the meantime be careful.”

“Roger that,” Eggsy says. Then he hisses “Fuck,” maybe at the pain, maybe at the mess this mission has become. It hardly matters really.

Harry shoves himself up out of the chair and begins pacing behind Merlin’s chair. It’s annoying, but it’s marginally better than Harry digging his fingernails into Merlin’s leg hard enough to draw blood, as he surely would have if he’d stayed in his seat.

The explosion seems to have set off not only alarms but the building’s sprinkler system, which does not at all improve Eggsy’s mood. He curses the entire way down the hall, and doesn’t let up as Merlin instructs him exactly where to plant the bugs. They may not survive whatever cleanup job this place is surely going to need, but he’s come all this way and they’re hardly going to waste the opportunity.

Merlin flexes his hands as he murmurs quiet directions to finally get Eggsy out of the office, to a window, and then to the fire escape that will take him back to ground level and out of there. The agents need him to be the unflappable voice of god in their ears; he just wishes sometimes that he could soothe his own anxieties as well as he can theirs, with just a few words of up or down, north or south, this way or that to the extraction point.

“Well done, Galahad,” Merlin says. “We’ll have you home soon.”

Eggsy just grunts in acknowledgement.

“How long ‘til he lands?” Harry asks quietly.

“Hour and a half.”

“I’m going down there,” Harry announces.

Merlin sighs and hits mute on the microphone again. “And you’re completely welcome to, but don’t you think martyring yourself out on the landing strip in the rain is a bit much.”

Harry grumbles, but he does drop back into the chair next to Merlin again. Merlin punches the microphone on again.

 

 

Eggsy doesn’t say much on the short flight back to the home estate. Merlin leaves his feed on the monitor while starts doing other work; Harry sits, and watches. Eggsy’s breathing, which filters in over the comm, isn’t as deep or as steady as Merlin would like, but then, he did just get blown up. Adrenaline is a nasty, nasty drug.

When the plane starts circling for a landing, Harry strides out of the room without another word to Merlin. Merlin sighs again and double-clicks the mic to get Eggsy’s attention.

“Just so you know,” Merlin says. “Arthur’s coming to meet you.”

Eggsy groans, and Merlin can imagine him thunking his head back against the headrest.

Harry stands with his hands folded in front of him as the plane taxis up the little runway toward the hangar. He wishes distantly that he had brought his umbrella; Merlin wasn’t wrong about the rain.

When the plane door opens and Eggsy clatters down the stairs it’s all Harry can do not to stride across the tarmac to him, to pull him into his arms and bury his face in Eggsy’s hair, dusty from the explosion and sweaty from the flight but sweet underneath, the scent of Eggsy that’s been absent from Harry’s body and bed for far too long now.

Before he can war with himself over the proper time and place for displays of emotion, however, Eggsy comes to him, all swaggering shoulders and an angry-set jaw.

“Were you in there listenin’ the whole time?” Eggsy asks.

“Yes,” Harry says simply.

“You’re a fucking bastard,” Eggsy says.

“That’s...hard to deny.”

Eggsy stares at him for a long moment, his eyes narrowed.

“Would you like to come inside? This weather is quite filthy. And we should have a talk,” Harry says, watching Eggsy’s eyes.

To his relief, Eggsy settles his weight back and relaxes, a grin replacing the scowl. Harry’s not sure he’s ever going to get used to Eggsy’s ability to swing between the highs and lows of emotion. To be sure, Harry has a temper, but he’s never been able to do happy the way Eggsy does.

And then, the grin gets wider, and Eggsy throws himself at Harry, his arms around his neck and his face tucked into the curve of Harry’s shoulder.

Harry returns the hug, regardless of rain and tarmac and the smirking glance of the pilot, who’s coming down the plane steps himself now, because really, none of it matters except for Eggsy in his arms.

Eggsy lets out a shuddering breath against Harry’s shoulder. Harry tightens his arms around him.

“I feel like shit,” Eggsy mutters.

“I imagine that will be the broken ribs,” Harry says, drily amused but also a little concerned, too. “Come, we can talk on the way to medical.”

He keeps his arm around Eggsy’s shoulder as they turn and walk toward the estate. Eggsy slumps heavily against him, which Harry takes for fatigue and fondness, but then Eggsy slumps harder.

“Eggsy,” Harry says worriedly.

Eggsy actually clutches his chest. “Something’s not right,” he says. He sounds dazed.

“What’s not right?”

“Chest. It hurts. ‘m I having a heart attack?” he asks vaguely as he does his best to crumple to the ground as non-alarmingly as possible.

Harry still finds it pretty fucking alarming, and is calling for help even as he crouches next to Eggsy.  He tries not to think about how he once would have been able to throw Eggsy over his shoulder and carry him to medical, because he’s scared and the fact that he can’t, now, makes him furious.

“You’re not having a heart attack,” he says, mainly to calm Eggsy down and try to get his bearings.  And then he looks at Eggsy’s bluish lips and realizes exactly what’s probably happened.  “I think it’s your lungs.  From your ribs.  We shouldn’t have put you on a plane.”

Eggsy just stares at him, eyes wide.

“You’re going to be okay,” Harry says. “It’s just not going to be fun.”

 

 

When it becomes clear that neither Harry nor Merlin are going to leave Eggsy’s bedside, the doctor rolls his eyes and lets them at it.

“So apparently having two of you means spending twice as much time fretting over hospital beds,” Merlin says. He slouches down in one of the two chairs they’ve dragged up beside Eggsy.

Harry, in the other chair on the opposite side of the bed, sits as close to Eggsy as he can get, his two huge hands dwarfing Eggsy’s so much smaller one. Where Merlin is rattled but recovering well, Harry looks utterly destroyed.

“He’s going to be all right,” Merlin says, more softly.

“I should never have put him on a plane.”

“You didn’t, for one. For another, we didn’t know. And now he’s here, and he’s safe.  It’s a stupid injury, but we’ve all had worse.”

“I’ve been an idiot.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.”

“You’d think I’d have learned the first time. Hollering at him and then skiving off to Kentucky to get shot. And now, I’ve told him I didn’t want him anymore, and...” he trails off with a squeeze to Eggsy’s inert hand.

“You’re being a bit dramatic,” Merlin says drily.

“You’re the one who blew the heads off several score heads of state.”

Merlin rolls his eyes. “While we’d both dearly love if I’d done it all for you, Harry, I didn’t do it all for you.”

“Of course not.”

“Eggsy might’ve.”

“I know,” Harry says.  “But I can’t quite return the favor now, can I?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

“Merlin,” Harry says, and there’s something in his tone that makes Merlin look at him. “Listen to me.”

“Yes?”

“I can’t save him anymore. And that matters, in the world of what we do.”

“Oh, Harry.” Merlin reaches across the bed, and closes his hand on top of Harry’s where he’s still gripping Eggsy’s. “None of us could ever save each other.”

“He was so scared,” Harry says.

“Well, he’s never had a collapsed lung before.  He was scared the first time he got shot too.”

“I’m not sure how to do this.”

“Don’t you fucking dare, Harry,” Merlin says.  He has no time or patience for this bullshit done this way.  Especially not after a few days of solid, comfortable bliss.

“You can’t expect me --”

“Oh yes I can.  And Eggsy can too.  You don’t know what we went through while you were unconscious.  And the year after that was no fucking picnic either.”

“I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t _talk_.”

“Yes, I remember. Distinctly. You know there were nights, before you woke up, when you were still in that coma, where I wished you’d just die?”

Harry looks shocked, and then angry. Merlin speaks again before he has the chance to lash out.

“I thought an ending would be better than waiting for we didn’t even know what. I’m not saying Eggsy and I had it worse,” Merlin says. “I’m saying nothing about this is easy. Or noble. You’re a allowed to feel like shit. You _should_ feel like shit. Do you think I didn’t hate myself, watching you lie there in that bed? Because I did. And yet here I still am. And so is Eggsy.”

“It’s hardly fair to call me a coward.”

“I’m not. But I am encouraging you not to be a fool. He’ll be awake soon, and he’s going to be happy you’re here.  That’s how you save him.  You make the life he has better.”

That, finally, seems to hit home for Harry. His shoulders slump, just barely, and he hangs his head over their collectively entwined hands.

The rhythm of Eggsy’s breathing shifts and, instantly, their entire focus is on him. The beeping of the monitors continues without much change. The light that comes into Harry’s face, when Eggsy stirs and blinks his eyes open, is like the sun coming up.

God, they’re all utter fools for each other.

Merlin squeezes Harry’s hand and stands up. “I’ll leave you to it,” he says quietly.

It takes Harry a moment to tear his gaze away from Eggsy’s face to look up at Merlin. “He’d be glad to see you, too.”

“He would. But you two have more to talk about.” Merlin kisses Harry briefly on the mouth, and Eggsy gently on the forehead, and exits the room.

 

 

The next week is a blur for all of them. Eggsy, who is royally pissed off to have a tube in his chest because of the collapsed lung on top of the three broken ribs spends most of his time alternating between sleeping and complaining.  Harry and Merlin take turns sitting with him around trying to actually do their goddamn jobs. Roxy stops in when she can, too, usually bringing both her dog and JB, who she’s been watching. When Eggsy’s awake, she teases him about being the most adored person in the organization.

“I should be,” Eggsy says. “I’ve got a fucking tube in my chest ‘cause a fuckin’ stapler blew up and then Merlin here put me on a plane without thinking about it because Harry was distracting him.  I’d rather have been shot.”

“I’m sure that could be arranged,” Roxy says primly, and exchanges a wry look with Merlin over Eggsy’s head.

“Talk to Arthur,” Merlin says to his clipboard when Eggsy voices the sentiment again later. “He’s the one in charge of mission assignments.”

Eggsy is particularly sour about the fact that Merlin and Harry go home, together, every night. Which strikes Merlin as rank hypocrisy, but when he offers to spend the night in Eggsy’s room Eggsy just shakes his head and waves a hand. “No, you lot go on,” he sulks. “But you all owe me, yeah?”

“Yes we do,” Merlin says.  “But know I’ve spent half these nights talking him down from the crazy place.”

“It’ll be better once we’re all there, yeah?”

“I can only hope,” Merlin says even if Eggsy is skipping ahead. He and Harry may know what they’re about now, but as far as Merlin can tell they still haven’t talked. When Merlin kisses Eggsy goodnight, he takes it as a good sign when Eggsy grabs the back of his head with the hand that doesn’t currently have an IV drip in it and holds him in place for a long moment.

 

 

Harry comes to spring him from the infirmary two days later. Eggsy is absolutely delighted when he asks, haltingly, if Eggsy will go home with him.

“Course, Harry,” Eggsy says, calm like, as if he hasn’t been waiting for that very offer. Then he asks, “Is Merlin coming too?”

“If you like,” Harry says. “But if it’s all right with you I think you and I could use a night just to ourselves.”

“Yeah.” Eggsy watches the way Harry’s hands are folded over the head of his cane, the almost imperceptible hunch to his shoulders that might be tiredness but is, Eggsy thinks, actually nerves. “Yeah, all right.”

“You have _got_ to be fucking kidding me,” Eggsy says, when they get to Harry’s house and Harry attempts to install him, not in Harry’s room, but in the guest room down the hall.

“Eggsy,” Harry says, placidly, like it’s Eggsy who’s being the ridiculous one in all this. “You’ve just gotten out of medical. I’ll never hear the end of it if you wind up back in the infirmary. From Merlin or anyone else.”

“I can keep my hands off you for a night, yeah?” Eggsy says.

“Well maybe I can’t,” Harry says.  “More importantly, a polite host provides options and you probably need more restful sleep than an old man and his nightmares are likely to provide.”

“You are the absolute worst,” Eggsy mutters under his breath.

“No one’s disagreeing.”

“Well, I ain’t your guest, I’ve done nothing the last two weeks but rest, and when the three of us are all together you’re not gonna keep me out of your room, yeah? So you might as well get used to it now.”

“I’m hardly going to bar the door. Now please stop expecting my worst.”

Eggsy stares at him in disbelief. “Oh you do not get to say that to me.”

And with that, he strides past Harry, up the stairs, and into Harry’s room, where he drops his bag on the floor and himself on the bed. It’s the one time he’s ever been glad Harry is slower than he used to be, because it means he’s too quick for Harry to grab him, to shove him against a wall, to put him in the place Harry thinks Eggsy should be in, instead of the place they both want him to be.

 

 

For a long moment Harry stares after him and has no idea what to do. But short of chucking Eggsy out, which is really beyond his physical abilities at the moment, there really is only one thing he can do.

“You have absolutely terrible manners,” Harry says, when he gets to the door of his bedroom to find Eggsy slumped on his bed.

“Yep. And you’re a prick.”

Harry stares at him.

“You can chuck me out or you can let me stay here,” Eggsy says. “You wanna provide _options_ , fine. I choose this. And you. Just like I did from the start.”

“I choose you too, you know,” Harry says, giving up on his own propriety and exhaustion to sit on the edge of the bed.  “It’s just that you keep turning out to be so much more than I expected.”

Eggsy preens a little.

“I am sorry,” Harry says. “For all the times I left you alone.”

Eggsy looks down at his hands, before he squints up at Harry. “S’ok. Just, don’t do it again? ‘Cause I can take it as many times as I have to but I hate getting my heart broken by you.”

“My dear boy,” Harry says, and puts a hand on the back of Eggsy’s neck. Eggsy melts into the touch. And maybe Merlin is right; maybe this all is as easy as just trusting to this extraordinary young man to know what he wants. “I am sorry,” he says again. “I told Merlin this already, and now I’m telling you. I don’t know how to do this. But I want to try. And I’m sure I’ll test your patience. And your sanity. But I do love you, and I do want you in my life, in whatever way you are willing to be there.”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Eggsy says. And then he throws himself into Harry’s arms. This time, there’s no collapse, thank god, and Harry can just hold him, and press Eggsy’s head more tightly into his shoulder.

When Eggsy finally pulls back his eyes are red, and he scrubs the back of his hand over them. “You got any food in the house, Harry? ‘Cause I am _starving_ and that infirmary food is shit.”

Eggsy’s bag stays on Harry’s bed when they go back downstairs.

Eggsy helps Harry cook, and unlike the night when Merlin was here making dinner for Harry, the kitchen is lively and noisy. Eggsy is a chatterbox, and also far too flashy with Harry’s knives. Harry finally banishes him to the dining room to set the table. Eggsy goes, grinning, and kisses Harry’s cheek on the way out.

The domesticity is terrifying.  And while it was with Merlin too, that was earned.  This is, no matter how easy, a lot in its suddenness.  When Harry says try, Eggsy apparently hears a guarantee of success on who knows what terms.  It’s something else they should talk about, but words of this sort were difficult for him even before Kentucky, and it’s been a long five years. They both deserve to just enjoy what’s left of a very much not so bad day.

After they’re done eating and washing up Harry offers Eggsy a drink. But the boy shakes his head and hides a yawn behind the back of his hand. “Actually, I think I just want to sleep,” he says.

Upstairs, in Harry’s room, they change into their pyjamas -- well, Harry does; Eggsy just pulls on flannel bottoms and leaves it at that -- and then jostle each other good-naturedly at the bathroom sink. Harry can’t help staring, in the mirror, at Eggsy’s body. His attention is drawn not so much to his broad shoulders or the lean planes of muscle, but to the scars. There are more there, than Harry remembers. He wonders how long it really has been since he took Eggsy to bed.

Despite Eggsy’s protestations both of tiredness and his declaration that he was perfectly capable of keeping his hands off Harry, Harry expects Eggsy to ask for sex as soon as they get into bed.

He doesn’t, though. Instead, he just burrows under the covers and, when Harry slides in next to him, wraps himself around Harry and burrows his face in his chest.

“You’re a fucking limpet,” Harry says, craning as best he can to turn off the bedside light when Eggsy refuses to unwrap his limbs.

“Uhuh.”

“I can’t believe Merlin puts up with this from you,” Harry teases. And that’s another conversation they’re going to need to have, about what practical shape these relationships of theirs can take, but that can certainly wait for later.

“You’d be surprised what people will do for you if you just ask,” Eggsy says, his voice muffled from where his face is pressed into Harry’s sternum. “You should try it sometime.”


	6. Chapter 6

Eggsy’s ghosting the edge of orgasm when Harry’s alarm goes off. Harry curses, fucks into Eggsy one more time, and then completely ruins his rhythm flailing one arm back towards his nightstand to do something about the alarm.  

The clock crashes against the wall, makes a sound of dismay and then dies.  Eggsy laughs as Harry gets his bearings and shoves into him hard.

“Let’s be late,” Eggsy says breathlessly. It doesn’t actually matter. It’s not as if spies are expected to keep regular hours.

Harry just growls.

They fuck  _forever_.  Eggsy’s still slow to react after all the medical drama, and staying power hasn’t been the problem after all of Harry’s medical drama.  After Eggsy comes, grateful and maybe sobbing, he twists and shoves Harry off his back, before rolling over, taking Harry’s dick in both his hands, and biting kisses against his mouth until he finally, finally comes, with a smile like a cat.

They lay together, side by side on their backs saying nothing until Harry finally snakes his hand into Eggsy’s.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Eggsy says. “Let’s not go in at all.”

Harry’s having none of it.

*

Eggsy doesn’t mind being at work, really, even if he’d rather be in Harry’s bed. He fucking loves his job, even on the weeks -- like this one -- where he’s been benched from active duty ‘til his ribs heal and gets stuck doing logistics and remote support for the knights who are actually in the field.

The fact that he and Harry fucked is clearly just as much of a secret as the fact that Harry and Merlin fucked -- which is to say, not at all. Roxy, to Eggsy’s annoyance, doesn’t ask about any of it, just gives him an  _I told you_  so look every time they pass each other in the hallways. Eggsy really wants to brag to someone about being back together with Harry but anyone who cares already knows and certainly doesn’t want to ask for details.

Eggsy is annoyed. Mainly because while he’s stuck running comms for Tristan, Harry and Merlin are having a lunch date.  Which is fine in every way except the one where Harry has someone to brag to now, and Eggsy doesn’t. Tristan’s not even an interesting agent to run comms for; he completely ignores all of Eggsy’s suggestions that the application of explosives would improve all of their days.

When Merlin finally comes back he already has his goddamned clipboard in hand, and his face gives absolutely nothing away. Eggsy is just about to demand some attention or  _something_ , Tristan be damned, but then Merlin stands beside him in the chair and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“How’s it going?” he asks.

“Please inform Galahad,” Tristan says stiffly over the comm. “That I will not be blowing anything up for his amusement.”

“Noted,” Merlin says drily. “I’ll take over from here.”  
  
“Thank god,” Tristan and Eggsy say together.

“Shove over,” Merlin says. Eggsy’s glad to surrender the chair, but wants less to move and lose the warm pressure of Merlin’s hand on his shoulder.

He does, though, but before he can leave and go in search of food himself, Merlin catches him by the arm.

“Come over for dinner, would you?”

Eggsy blinks. “Like, to your house?”

“Yes, to my house.”

“I don’t even know where you live.”

“Well, say yes, then, and I’ll give you the directions.”

“ _Tonight_?” Eggsy asks.

Merlin smiles. “No, I think Harry wants to hoard you for a few more days.  Besides, a gentleman -- at least one who isn’t Harry fucking Hart -- actually makes plans in advance.”

*

Eggsy enjoys being hoarded, enjoys knowing when he gets up in the morning that he’ll go to sleep again that night in Harry’s bed as Harry insists on keeping him as close as a stray dog finally come home. Sure, Eggsy technically has the house Kingsman provides him, but he thinks of it as his mother’s and his sister’s even if he keeps a room there.  His life since VDay has been one of a sort of statelessness. Quite possibility because he’s been waiting for Harry to get his shit together when he hasn’t been waiting for Harry to simply get well.

Three days in Harry gives him a key, which isn’t particularly notable. But Harry also gives him the details of his security systems, which is. All of it happens without fanfare, which Eggsy appreciates, even if it leaves him waiting for the other shoe to drop.  

When he voices as much to Merlin, one evening at the home estate when Merlin is doing paperwork and Eggsy isn’t even pretending he’s not sitting up waiting for Roxy to land after a successful mission in Belize, Merlin just folds his hands on his keyboard and tilts his head at Eggsy, ever-so-slightly reproachfully.

“What?” Eggsy says, retracting his hand from the tin of biscuits on Merlin’s desk, just in case that look is about him stealing snacks.

“Oh no no no. Both of you do not get to go paranoid on me.”

“What? Why? Is Harry being stupid again?”

Merlin rolls his eyes and pushes the tin toward Eggsy. “No, he’s not. So don’t you start now.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Yes.”

“So -- how’s he doing?”

Merlin looks amused. “You’re the one having sleepovers every night. You tell me.”

“Well, yes. But -- you’ve known him longer. What’s he gonna do next?”

“You know I can’t actually predict the future.”

“Aww, now you tell me.”

Merlin quirks the corner of his mouth up, the half-smile Eggsy used to find fucking infuriating when he was in training. Now Eggsy just wants to kiss him on it. “At some point,” he says, “Probably fairly soon, the three of us are going to have to sit down and have a conversation about how we’re all going to work. Which I’m starting to actually believe is going to end happily for each of us. And in the meantime I’m enjoying the peace and quiet. As well as the fact that you’re both seeing each other, and seeing me.”

*

Two days after the conversation with Merlin in the comms room, Eggsy wakes up when Harry’s alarm goes off. In itself, that’s unusual; this last week he’s gotten used to Harry waking him up before the alarm, with kisses or even quiet conversation. But all Harry’s doing now is pulling a pillow tighter over his head and making unhappy sounds.

Eggsy takes it upon himself to turn the damn thing off and then lies on his side and waits.

“You go on and get in the shower,” Harry instructs from half under the pillow. “I’ll be along.”

“Yessir,” Eggsy says, and leaves a kiss on Harry’s shoulder when he slides out from under the warm covers to pad into the bathroom. Usually, it’s Harry who showers first while Eggsy drags his way toward full consciousness in bed. Eggsy realizes, halfway through scrubbing his hair, why it’s him in here and Harry still in bed. Harry’s in pain -- his leg’s bothering him today, or maybe it’s his head, or any one of the countless pieces of Harry that are still, more or less, broken. And Harry sent Eggsy in here because he doesn’t want Eggsy to see.

Which is bullshit, as far a Eggsy is concerned; he’s spent far too many months sitting by Harry fucking Hart’s fucking bedside waiting for him to wake up than to lose any sleep over the fact that his lover is a bit stiff and sore in the morning. Eggsy’s ribs are still healing; he’s stiff and sore a lot of mornings, too.

He thinks about pointing that out to Harry; considers dropping onto the bed next to him and making a joke about how if Harry doesn’t watch out he’ll get as sore and useless as Eggsy. Except, Eggsy reflects, that sort of thing never seems to amuse Harry. Harry means for Eggsy to take a shower, get dressed, go downstairs, scavenge breakfast, and go to work, and not watch while Harry starts another day struggling to reconcile what he is now with what he used to be, as if the fact that he hurts more than he used to means he’s somehow less than the man who turned Eggsy’s world upside down.

Eggsy grabs a change of clothes out of his bag, pretends to believe Harry’s asleep again, and slips downstairs. Really, it’s the least Eggsy can do.

*

Harry finally makes it to work two hours after Eggsy.  Eggsy knows, because he’s fretting at Merlin who is aggressively disinterested.

“You’re going to have to figure out this one on your own,” Merlin tells him.

Eggsy gets the sense in that, but still flips the man off. It’s in Merlin’s best interest to be useful here. But no, today, Harry’s an object lesson, and suddenly all at once Eggsy finally gets that days like this are never going to not be an issue.  It’s devastating, not in the fact of it, but in the nature of all else it implies about mortality and age and Eggsy’s obsessive youth.  Suddenly, he can’t be as mad at Harry as he used to be, and that’s inconvenient too.

Eggsy calls in the most disgusting, greasy takeaway that he can to the tailor shop and rides the train there and back with it while working on some overdue reports.  He brings it to Harry -- Arthur’s -- office without so much as a by your leave, and doesn’t offer Harry any of it.

Harry starts picking at Eggsy’s food immediately. Which is how Eggsy gets him to eat something resembling lunch in the form of cold chips and a vicious curry.  They don’t talk much, but that’s okay.  They’ve been practicing the not talking thing in the evenings, just sharing space.  It’s nice.  Grownup and eerie.  It feels like the rest of Eggsy’s life.

*

“I’m going over to Merlin’s on Friday,” Eggsy tells Harry that night, while they walk to Harry’s house from the shop. Harry had insisted they not take the cab, and so long as Harry doesn’t keel over Eggsy’s willing to let him have that, and not notice how heavily Harry is leaning on his cane.

“Do you even know where he lives?”

“He gave me directions.”

“Mm. Good.”

“Do you want me to get Roxy to come over and keep you company?”

Harry stares at him.

“I’m not saying you need watching or anything.”  Eggsy backtracks quickly and awkwardly. “Just, you know, you might be lonely, without either of us around.”

He watches as Harry tries not to grin too viciously. “My dear boy, you are a delight.  But so is silence.”

*

Harry watches, amused, from the armchair in the bedroom while Eggsy is indecisive about clothes.  Eventually Eggsy, who has been too wrapped up holding ties againsts waistcoats and shirts to notice Harry’s enjoyment, turns and echos his smile.

“I like this life, you know,” he says, almost a question but not really.

“The clothes suit you,” Harry says, diplomatic and fond.

“That’s not what I mean.”

For a long time Harry says nothing. Eggsy’s sentiment hangs between them perfectly. But somehow it’s not enough.

“You do love to be loved,” Harry notes.

Eggsy makes a fond noise of disgust. “So do you.”

The sentiment hardly encompasses all the things Harry loves, and he considers pointing that out, but he supposes it’s not untrue. And it’s nice to see Eggsy happy, balancing his life between all the things that claim it.

He’ll go home to see his mother on Saturday, Eggsy says, noting he figures he should leave Merlin and Harry some time too.

“So we can compare notes about you?” Harry asks drily. One of his many reservations about this entire situation has always been the slide into doing nothing but talking about their relationships; it’s tedious.

“You bet, ‘arry,” Eggsy says, grinning hugely as he puts on the accent that isn’t even his anymore.

Harry is so glad he doesn’t have to miss the boy that Eggsy once was.

*

Merlin, as it turns out, lives not too far from Harry. It would be a long walk, between their places, but a doable one. Eggsy wonders if the proximity -- close but not too close -- is by design, or if they’ve both had their respective homes for even longer than they’ve had each other.

Merlin lives in some sort of former factory, now converted into lofts, but more by artists than by rich people who want to pretend they’re artists.  From the outside, it’s a little bit grungy looking, but Eggsy can tell it’s gonna be flash inside just from the panel for the security system he uses to buzz up from the front door. Merlin probably put it in himself.

The first thing Eggsy notices when Merlin opens the door to his apartment up on the third floor  is that he’s not wearing a tie. That’s quickly followed by the realization that Merlin’s shirt is open at the throat, exposing a patch of skin that it is not, on balance, particularly revealing, but that makes Eggsy’s mouth go completely dry.

“Hello,” Merlin says, when Eggsy fails to say anything at all.

“You look fuckin’ incredible,” Eggsy finally manages. He’s missed the other man.

“Likewise,” Merlin says, dragging his eyes all the way up Eggsy’s body. Eggsy can practically feel the wheels going in his head. They’ve not even touched -- Merlin’s still standing in the doorway, and Eggsy’s still in the goddamned hallway -- but suddenly the air around them crackles with tension.

“All right then,” Merlin says, when Eggsy’s started to wonder if they’re going to shag right here in the hallway. “Let me get my coat and we can go.”

“Go? Wait. Where are we going?”

Merlin smiles as he pulls on a wool coat that only serves to emphasize his trim waist and his broad shoulders. Eggsy doesn’t even try to stop staring; Merlin smiles at him, like a cat on the prowl. “We’re going out.”

_Out_  turns out to be a lounge with a spectacular DJ and a snooty door person who ushers Merlin and Eggsy in with little more than a familiar nod. Eggsy finally lets his jaw drops as soon as they step inside, jolted, for the moment, out of the intense awareness of every point at which Merlin’s arm is touching his.

“I didn’t know you were...”

“What?”

Eggsy has no idea how to phrase it.  After all, how do you say  _I find you really hot but I assumed you had no life but your job and our mutual cranky old boyfriend?_  But apparently his face makes it obvious.

“You don’t think the old Arthur came up with that ridiculous test at the club all on his lonesome, did you?” Merlin asks. He puts a hand on Eggsy’s elbow and steers him toward the bar.

“Does Harry ever come here?”

“You’d be surprised.” It’s not a no, though it’s not quite a yes either. Clearly, Eggsy will need to get that story sometime. For now, though, he needs to lean into Merlin’s side, Merlin’s arm snug and low around his waist, while the other man orders them both drinks. When he hands Eggsy’s to him and clinks their glasses together, Eggsy doesn’t even really think about the train tracks.

*

Eggsy’s pleasantly surprised when Merlin puts an arm low around his waist and steers him out onto the dance floor. They dance, they actually dance, and Eggsy feels hazier than he probably should on just a couple of pints, but Merlin is pressed up close to him and knows exactly what he’s doing.

“You worked real hard to seem uptight when you were training us, you know,” Eggsy says, mouth brushing against Merlin’s cheek.

“Don’t need proposals having a crush on me.”

“That generally a problem?”

“You see the mess that is Harry’s life?”

Eggsy laughs.  “I’m part of pattern then?”

“Nah,” Merlin says with a shrug. “He  _actually_  wants you.”

Eggsy wonders how many hearts Harry has broken not because he’s incompetent at romance, but because he’s also apparently incompetent at everything else.

*

Eggsy likes being out with Merlin and likes dancing with him. In part because it feels so excruciatingly normal. Another time, he’d be happy to do this all night before going home with the man to curl up in bed half-drunk and completely exhausted. This, however, is absolutely not that night, and an hour in Eggsy is tugging Merlin close by the fabric of his shirt and whispering that he should take them home  _right now_.

Merlin goes for it with a raw aggression Eggsy has known he has in him, but almost never, ever sees at Kingsman. For a moment it makes him wonder what Harry and Merlin are like when they’re alone and how often they break furniture fucking, but then Merlin’s herding him out of the club and into a cab -- not a Kingsman cab, just a cab. Merlin doesn’t crowd him into a corner of the seat, but he might as well, for all his gaze pins Eggsy in the flickering light of the streetlamps they slide past.

Merlin leaves a hand on the small of Eggsy’s back as they climb the stairs to Merlin’s flat. Even through his jacket, Eggsy feels the heat of his touch.

Inside the door, Merlin latches the lock, sets the alarm, and pushes Eggsy against the wall of the entryway in a sequence of movements so controlled and fluid they would take Eggsy’s breath away, if Merlin wasn’t already sucking it out of his lungs through his mouth.

When Merlin grabs Eggsy’s wrists and presses them into the wall on either side of his head, every part of Eggsy melts except his dick. He whimpers and gets a small chuckle from Merlin in response. The grip on his wrists tightens, and he suspects that if he lets this go another minute, even all his Kingsman training won’t be enough for him to twist free. Eggsy is completely fine with that, except for the part where they’re still in Merlin’s hallway and Eggsy would really prefer to be in a bed with Merlin’s cock up his ass.

Eggsy finally lets himself get just enough space from Merlin’s lips to tell him so.

“Come on then,” Merlin says when he does. He only lets go of one wrist, and drags Eggsy to the bedroom by the other.

*

Eggsy shakes his head when Merlin asks if he can tie him up. “Would’ve said yes before I wound up in this line of work.”

“Fair enough.”

That said, three minutes later, Eggsy is naked, hard, and holding on to Merlin’s headboard because that’s what he’s been told to do. He’s got no problem with a bit of control, just isn’t really a fan of rope burn and kind of thinks things like marks, or at least marks like that, is something they should all talk about. But that can happen some other time; right now, Merlin needs to get naked and get on top of him immediately. Merlin, however, apparently has other plans, because he’s just sitting there on the edge of the mattress touching Eggsy like he’s faintly interesting.

“You’re full of surprises,” Eggsy pants.

Merlin smirks. “You’re not.”

Eggsy would love to curse him out for that, but he’s not gonna give Merlin the satisfaction. Also, he may be impatient, but if this is how they’re doing this, this shit’s gonna go all night, and Eggsy is totally down with that. No wonder Merlin and Harry have been fucking for two-and-a-half decades despite being crazier than a sack of rabid ferrets. And no wonder Harry’s been pissy when it’s been the three of them. Totally different vibe for sure. Eggsy totally wants to spend some thought on that, just like he wants to think about the thing about the marks. In depth. Later.

For now, he’ll be patient, and enjoy the tension as Merlin runs a fingertip down his stomach and across his abs. Totally.

“Would you fucking do something?” he demands, when Merlin makes no move to touch him further.

Merlin shushes him softly. Eggsy clamps his mouth shut automatically, which is as maddening as anything and just as unavoidable. There is apparently a straight line between what comes out of Merlin’s mouth and what his body does. No brain involved.

And then Merlin leans forward, presses his mouth to Eggsy’s clavicle, and bites.

Eggsy jerks and swears -- that  _hurt_  -- but by the time the initial sting is fading and Merlin is worrying a bruise into his skin with his teeth, he’s even harder and his breath is going wonky.

“Just let me play,” Merlin says softly.

Eggsy squints up at him.

“The whole point of this is that you don’t have to think, or worry, or catalog objectives or assess threats. Just relax.”

Eggsy knows Merlin is absolutely right, and he hates that this isn’t as easy as the days and nights they’d tumbled into hotels or, for that matter, closets on the estate, just because they were both mad at Harry. But this is better, or at least, can be. Deliberately, he uncurls his fingers from around the bars of Merlin’s bed.

“You too then,” he says, reaching for Merlin’s face and pulling him down for a kiss. “Less show. More us.”

Eggsy is a little surprised, and very relieved, when something in Merlin’s body shivers and goes loose. That Merlin is tightly-wound is a secret to no one; that he’ll unwind for Eggsy at all is a new and terrifying revelation and responsibility.

Eventually Merlin pulls away from the kiss and starts mapping Eggsy’s body with his mouth, tracing with his tongue and teeth the places where his hands had lingered before. Eggsy lets himself melt into the mattress under the attention, and above him he can feel Merlin’s movements lose the edge of calculation and shift into sheer desire and instinct.

By the time Merlin’s naked Eggsy’s not even capable of coherent thought, and by the time Merlin has brought him to the edge and pulled him back twice, and is buried balls-deep in him while he jerks Eggsy off, his breath is hitching with the sheer overwhelming intensity of it. He’s not really sure how it’s different than crying.

They come at the same time, which Eggsy didn’t even know was possible in real actual life but apparently is when you’ve got a super spy edging you. To his relief, Merlin doesn’t let him go; just holds the back of his head and lets Eggsy press his face into his bare chest and shudder his way back to something like linear thought.

“Are you all right?” Merlin asks eventually, the words gravelly in his chest.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eggsy manages. He tries to lift a hand to scrub away the tears that have appeared somehow on his cheeks, but his hands are awkwardly caught in between their bodies and he doesn’t care that much anyway.

“I’ll take that as a yes?”  
  
“I have a lunch date. Tomorrow. With my Mum. And my baby sister, and I feel like I’m not going to be able to move for a week.” Seriously though, Eggsy is not sure any of that was a brilliant idea in his still vaguely convalescent state, not that he really cares. He’s slipping towards sleep fast, and not without a little bit of relief. There are declarations to be made here, and Eggsy is pretty sure he deserves a nap first. God, Merlin is so weird. No wonder Harry’s in love with him.

The last thing he hears before he slips into the dark warmth of sleep, is Merlin’s deep, contented laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> There is so much other stuff we were supposed to be doing instead.
> 
> You can follow us both on tumblr, for more Kingsman obsession and all the stuff we should, and should not, be doing.
> 
> http://seetheandtumble.tumblr.com  
> http://lettersfromtitan.tumblr.com


End file.
